Some of you have seen my theater setup in the basement.  I'm about to replace the center-piece of the theater.  The old PC down there is going away soon.  My goal is to build a energy efficient & high performance computer that will serve as my Media Center, central file storage, and Virtual server.  

Here are my Components:

• Antec 430 Fusion Black (w/ 430w power supply)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz 45nm
• Asus P5Q-EM G45 Micro ATX motherboard
• Hauppauge HVR-2250 Dual ATSC/QAM Tuner
• LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Reader
• OCZ Reaper HPC 2x2gb DDR2 1066 PC2-8500
• 400Gb SATA2 Hard Drive (for OS & Virtuals)
  
• 1Tb Western Digital GP SATA2 (for Recordings)

Operating System: I'm thinking that I'll install Vista Ultimate 64-bit Edition.  The only reason to stick with 32-bit is compatibility for games.  I don't play a lot of games, and I'd like to be able to utilize more RAM.  With that extra RAM, I'd install a virtual server (either Microsoft or VMWare) and then consolidate the Linux machine that I currently use for Apache web server. 

Power savings:  By updating my media center PC and consolidating my Linux server into virtual, I hope to decrease my energy consumption.  I measured both of these machines and I've estimated 1055KwH/year for my Linux computer and 1243KwH/year for my Media Center PC.  I'll follow up this article when I get a power consumption reading from my new PC.

Video Performance:  The G45 chipset is marketed to handle playback of 1080p high-definition video; however it's very new still & the verdict is not yet out.  I imagine that in time, I'll find a game that I want to install and I'll pickup a decent Pcie 2.0 video card.